#longisquama

[a-book-of-creatures]

ARE YOU KIDDING ME WE NOW HAVE A RELATIVE OF LONGISQUAMA

IT’S CALLED 👉👉 MIRASAURA 👈👈 AND IT REPRESENTS A THIRD TIME COMPLEX INTEGUMENT EVOLVED??? AND MAYBE THOSE CREST THINGS WERE COMMON IN DREPANOSAURS?

It’s so prettyyy *_*

[knuppitalism-with-ue]

Its finally out! Please Welcome Mirasaura! A new drepanosaur from the Middle Triassic of France. Gabriel Ugueto made the press artwork but I couldn't hold back and had to do my own interpretation during break time =)

This tiny guy not only shows strucutres that are basically the same as in Longisquama, it shows that Longissquama was likewise a drepanosaur and that reptiles experimented with beta keratin structures way earlier than we thought so far.

Learn more about it here:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09167-9

[cypressure]

Longisquama (2026), soap ground etching with aquatint

The letter "L" from the series Nothing Left But Their Names. This print is available on my store.

[frippp]

Next up with the prehistoric animals that are just so so silly its longisquama! A silly name to fit a silly creature!

[minecraft-inspo]

Mirasaura is a fascinating little reptile recently described from the Grès à Voltzia Formation of France. It is not only interesting in its own right, but also noteworthy for helping solve the long-standing mystery that is Longisquama. That animal, known from only one partial specimen, has remained contentious for over 50 years, with uncertain taxonomic position and unusual anatomy. In particular, the large, filamentous structures present in Longisquama have attracted a myriad of hypotheses, explaining them as everything from true feathers to unassociated plant fossils. The discovery of Mirasaura shows that those filaments are indeed a genuine anatomical feature of Longisquama and its close relatives. Not only that, but they appear to have been a novel integumentary structure of this clade, not homologous to scales or feathers. Mirasaura shows phylogenetic affinity to other Triassic weirdos such as Drepanosaurus, tying Longisquama into the drepanosauromorph clade. While such a relationship has been suggested before, this additional evidence from Mirasaura limits plausible alternatives, suggesting that Longisquama has finally found its home in the reptile family tree.

[jtnavart]

Here's another quick Alya

[justgoji]

Breaking news drepanosaurs are fucked up

[topios]

The full set of Dragon Dinosaurs.